Chapter 50: Orc Killer (1)

Under normal circumstances, after losing nearly half of their vanguard, the shaman priests behind the orcs would surely notice something was wrong. However, the orcs killed last time were scattered, and their soul fragments were gradually harvested by Donald, never returning to the Orc God totem. Moreover, the battlefield was far from the main army, so they were still unaware of the losses suffered by the vanguard.
It wasn’t that the orcs were truly ignorant or lacked any military experience; rather, every time they invaded human territories, the humans defended themselves with sturdy fortresses and rarely ventured out to fight. From the perspective of the stronger side, they naturally didn’t bother worrying about their vanguard.
It wasn’t until a group of a hundred vanguard fighters sent by the orc leaders to scout ahead that the main army discovered the chaotic battlefield and the headless corpses of their kin when passing through the ambush site, which enraged the orc leaders greatly.
“Damn human scoundrels, cowardly sneak attackers! Investigate! We must find those who launched the attack!”
Prince Kanzhi, the leader of this coalition of three tribes, ordered that the identity of the culprits be uncovered completely.
This massive invasion by the three orc tribes into the human kingdom of Celt, which had rarely been a target before, was actually initiated by Prince Kanzhi, the leader of this coalition.
Kanzhi came from one of the major orc tribes, the Ox-Head Tribe. As the son of a chieftain, he held a noble status. But he wasn’t the eldest son of the chieftain—there was an even more outstanding elder brother—so he had no chance of becoming the tribe’s heir. At best, he could serve as a military commander after his brother ascended to power.
In the relatively primitive orc tribes, there was no noble feudal system like in human societies, let alone the possibility of changing jobs freely as in Donald’s modern world!
Therefore, if Kanzhi wanted to take control of the tribe, rebellion was his only option. But such an act meant certain death if it failed—after all, orc tribes punished traitors in a brutal and cruel manner. Though ambitious, Kanzhi lacked the strength, and rebellion would surely lead to his death.
Fortunately, his father loved this younger son dearly and granted him control over three smaller tribes among those under the tribe’s rule, hoping he could live a stable and prosperous life after his brother became king.

However, with military power in his hands, Kanzhi’s ambitions grew once again. With the limited forces at his disposal, fighting against an entire tribe was undoubtedly like throwing eggs at a rock. But during the annual invasion of human territories to plunder supplies, Kanzhi found a new solution: seize a piece of human land, move his tribe there, and develop it into a new tribe, with himself as its leader. Such an action was permitted by the Orc Tribal Alliance and even rewarded; the priests led by the Great Shaman might also regard him as a heroic orc. Whenever he thought of this outcome, Kanzhi would laugh himself to sleep.

In Kanzhi’s mind, humans were weak and inferior races that could be easily plundered and enslaved. With the combined forces of his three tribes, they could easily conquer half of a kingdom. To prevent other tribes from competing with him, he chose the difficult and rarely visited Northern Celt Kingdom, where only a few tribes went to plunder every few years.

It wasn’t that this orc prince hadn’t considered the fact that if humans were so weak, how could the mighty orc race have been driven to the barren northern wastelands? The only reason he could think of was that although humans were weak, their true gods were extremely powerful and numerous, making even the Great Orc God an unworthy opponent. As long as the orc race did not launch a large-scale attack, the human gods wouldn’t care about losing one or two kingdoms. That’s why Kanzhi came up with this idea.

This was also the mindset of most orcs, actually instilled over the years by the orc leadership, guided by the wise orcs led by the Great Shaman. After all, orc defeats were an undeniable fact. If the truth were revealed to the people, their morale would surely suffer severely, and the extinction of the orc race would be only a matter of time. It was thanks to these false narratives that the orcs could continue to thrive in the barren lands of the northwest continent. This gave Prince Kanzhi immense confidence that he could lead the orc coalition to conquer a human kingdom. Thus, he hid his true intentions, claiming merely to plunder the wealthy human lands, and convinced the chiefs of the three small tribes to lead their strongest adult warriors. He also gathered a squad of elite soldiers from his own tribe and set off for the Celt Kingdom. Otherwise, the old shaman who accompanied them would surely have stopped Kanzhi from pursuing such a suicidal act.

After a arduous journey, as they drew closer to human territory, the orcs grew increasingly excited, as if the unguarded human villages filled with bags of food were right before their eyes! Yet, just one day’s journey away from the human border fortress, the orc soldiers were massacred—right at a distance equivalent to just one meal’s walk from the main army. This enraged Prince Kanzhi, who was determined to build a great empire.

After analysis by the veteran shaman accompanying the army, it seemed the ambushers were not in large numbers. The battle was fierce but brief, lasting no more than the time it took to drink a pot of wine, during which hundreds of orc soldiers were killed. The orcs firmly believed that humans could not possess such formidable military strength.

The veteran shaman was a shaman-priest at the peak of Bronze rank. With the enhancement of the Orc God totem, he could wield the power of a Silver-ranked warrior. As a member of the council, his status among the orcs was even higher than that of ordinary tribal chiefs.

The shaman sensed something unusual. After consulting with Prince Kanzhi, he decided to halt the army’s advance temporarily and send a young Black Iron shaman-priest along with fifty elite orcs to investigate the enemy ahead.

Dozens of elite warriors, taller than ordinary orcs by a head, were separated from the main force and marched aggressively toward the human fortress.

When Donald discovered this group, he immediately abandoned his plan to return to the fortress to report his mission. Instead, he set up layers of traps in the dense forest and waited there for the enemy to arrive.

“Claiming the lives of over 200 orc pioneers alone is certainly enough to shock the nobles in the fortress. But such achievements would only earn him some nominal rewards—far from enough to grant him a knightly fief!”

Moreover, he felt somewhat disappointed as he hadn’t encountered true orc elites. After all, killing orcs wasn’t just for military glory; it was also to collect soul fragments. With sufficient soul power, he could permanently summon an army truly loyal to him. For this reason, he was willing to give up the chance to gain a fief this time.

After all, there would always be opportunities to earn military glory in the future, but soul power, due to the restrictions of the gods in this world, was rare and hard to obtain! Besides, killing orcs and earning military glory were essentially the same thing—their outcomes did not affect each other. By killing enough orcs, one could gain both soul power and more military achievements.

Originally, Donald was somewhat disappointed at having to leave, but when the orcs sent soldiers away from the main force once again, he was overjoyed, especially when he saw from the owl’s perspective a figure in the orc army who was considerably thinner, holding a wooden staff, wearing a loose robe, with three monster skulls hanging around his neck.